starfields
by thepensword
Summary: Izuku Midoriya is born with stars in his eyes and a dream in his heart. He looks up into the velvet sky and wishes to explore it, despite the fact that he is small and he is weak and everyone says he cannot. But he will. It'll be hard, but someday he'll fly. (Space AU)
1. and the stars were in his eyes

_**Prologue**_

 **and the stars were in his eyes**

* * *

He is born with stars in his eyes.

He enters the world like everyone else; screaming. His eyes are closed, at that point; his head coated in a soft fuzz of green, and his mother smiles a tired smile and thinks, _this one is perfect. I will always protect him_.

The day he opens his eyes for the first time is the day of a meteor shower. They're on a hilltop beneath the velvet sky, and stars are falling all across the horizon.

A small child whoops excitedly, and his eyes flicker open just as a meteor blazes overhead.

"Oh," gasps his mother, as she looks into emerald eyes that shine like the stars above. "Oh, Izuku."

 _He's beautiful_ , she thinks. _My little star._

* * *

"You'll never get into the academy," scoffs Kacchan. Kacchan is less like a star and more like an asteroid; violently burning across the sky. He never, ever stops moving.

"Yes, I will," insists Izuku. "I have to. Mom says I'm a star."

Kacchan laughs and laughs and laughs.

"Maybe that's why, then," he says. "Stars can't fly."

"They can!"

"No," says Kacchan. "Those are meteors, idiot. Real stars don't fly."

And Izuku closes his mouth, even though he knows Kacchan is wrong, because the universe is in constant motion. Their solar system is spinning and spinning around a galaxy that is itself spinning in turn. The stars are never still.

Stars fly, and one day Izuku will too.

* * *

He is watching the footage and his eyes are full of stars.

" _I am here!_ " says Captain Yagi to a crowd of frightened victims. " _Do not be afraid!_ "

Toshinori Yagi. The best captain to ever come out of UA Star Academy. The greatest HERO history has ever seen.

All Might. Liberator of the stars.

"Wow," says Izuku.

One day, he's going to be just like All Might. One day, he's going to be the greatest HERO.

But for now, he's just a little boy with stars in his eyes.

* * *

"I'm going to the academy," says Izuku into the mirror. "I'm going to UA."

His reflection laughs at him; small and weak and powerless. Freckles dance across his cheeks like constellations, taunting him of the things he cannot have.

"Shut up," he says to his reflection. "I'm going to do it."

* * *

Izuku is not a proper mix.

He's not pure human—almost nobody is, these days—but he may as well be, for all his alien genetics did for him.

"You're really pathetic," laughs Kacchan. "All those cool genes and all you get is weird green hair."

A fist blazing with sparks flies past Izuku's cheek. He dodges, just in time, and Kacchan walks off, laughing.

Izuku runs a hand through his curls and tries to stop the tears from falling.

He fails.

* * *

"I'm going to do it," says Izuku. "I'm going to do it."

The other children laugh, but he doesn't care.

He's going to succeed.

* * *

He's fourteen years old when he accidentally helps to stop an intergalactic criminal.

"You idiot!" chastises Officer Woods. "What were you thinking, rushing in like that? You're lucky we were in the area or you would be dead!"

Izuku bows his head and grits his teeth to keep from crying, but secretly he's proud.

He's proud because if he hadn't been there, Kacchan would have died.

It doesn't matter that the HEROs came, because they would have come too late.

He thinks Kacchan knows it too.

Across the scorched mud, Kacchan's eyes meet his, and for just a moment Izuku sees a thank you.

Izuku smiles a small smile and walks home alone.

* * *

"I think you can do it," says Toshinori Yagi, eyes blazing blue and palm outstretched. "I will train you."

Izuku clutches his chest as years of frustration come screaming out of his lungs, squeezed between his teeth like flame and fear.

Toshinori stands before him like some monumental pinnacle and the tears slide from Izuku's eyes, glistening and bright in the sunset.

Like stars, they fall to the ground.

* * *

Izuku doesn't have stars in his eyes anymore.

No—

Now, the stars live in his heart.

And he's going to use them to fly.

* * *

 **Ok so basically this is the prologue to my 'Starfields' series which is unfortunately formatted for ao3. Given that ffn doesn't allow the creation of series, this is going to be somewhat unwieldy, but story progresses non-linearly as a series of semi-chronological related fics. I'm going to post them all here, in this same fic, but I will put headers to signify the different fics. So don't be confused when the chapters don't link together quite as you'd expect from most stories.**

 **Also if the header formatting turns out weird...listen, I tried, okay? FFN just hates me and the feeling is mutual.**


	2. Silica 5 (Part 1)

_**1**_

 **Silica 5**

 _(Part 1)_

* * *

They meet for the first time on a planet made of glass.

It's beautiful here, and so blindingly bright that Izuku has to squint even through his shaded goggles. Silica 5's twin suns reflect off of the ground and turn the world into an array of light; crystals in every color crunch beneath his feet, rainbows skating over him as he passes prism after prism.

It's absolutely stunning here, but nothing else is quite as striking as the sight now before Izuku's eyes.

On a ridge in front of him stands a boy. He's facing away from Izuku, but silhouetted against the light he looks like some ancient god. Despite the fact that he seems to be human, his arms are bare and yet unburned, faint clouds of steam drifting up from his skin as if the unforgiving light of the twin suns cannot touch him. Standing there, unmoving, he looks carved from stone.

In short, he's beautiful.

Izuku's boots crunch against the crystals, and the boy turns.

Izuku forgets how to breathe.

His eyes are hidden by goggles, so he's not completely immune to the blinding rays filling the air, but the rest of his face is uncovered. His hair is striking: red and white, with a clean line down the middle separating the strands. His jawline is clean, his skin smooth, and his expression unreadable.

Izuku's still not entirely convinced he's not looking at an immortal.

"Who are you?" asks the boy, and the illusion shatters, because there's no way a god would sound so lonely. Or, at least, a god would be better at hiding it.

Izuku blinks. The silence stretches between them awkwardly as he tries to remember how to speak.

"Um," says the boy, lifting an uncertain hand into the air and waving it vaguely in Izuku's face.

 _When had he moved so close?_

"Hello? Are you okay?"

"Izuku," blurts out Izuku, and the heat creeping up his neck and into his face is unrelated to the twin suns.

"What?"

"My name. I'm Izuku."

"Oh." The boy turns away, and for a moment Izuku catches a glimpse of his eyes behind his goggles. They're just as stunning as the rest of him; one gray as the clouds back home, one blue as the sky on a clear day.

"Did my father send you?"

Izuku blinks again. "Who's your father?"

The boy laughs once, but it doesn't sound very much like what Izuku associates with proper laughter. It sounds more like the glass around them: sharp around the edges and broken in places. "I guess that's a no, then."

"Yeah," says Izuku, for lack of something better to say.

"Then why are you here?"

"I'm—" Izuku stops and has to think about that for a moment. "Wait. Here like, _here,_ or here on Silica 5?"

"Both. Either."

"I'm exploring," says Izuku, because that's the easier question to answer. "I had some free time so I figured I'd go on a hike."

"A hike."

Izuku nods.

"On...Silica 5."

"Uh." Now that he thinks about it, it does seem rather insane. "Yeah."

"Then why are you on the planet in the first place?"

That's a slightly more complicated answer, because depending on who this boy is and who he's affiliated with it could land Izuku in a heap of trouble.

"Business," he ends up saying, because that's simpler than explaining he's here to negotiate custody of a criminal with a bunch of bounty hunters.

The boy nods once. He's frowning like he doesn't quite buy Izuku's non-explanation, but he doesn't pry.

"You should go back to wherever you came from," says the boy, turning away to look back out over the glistening horizon. "It's not safe for humans out here."

"What about you?" asks Izuku, before he can stop himself.

The boy glances over his shoulder and waves a hand through the air. Crystals dance around his fingertips, too light to be glass. A breeze blows them into Izuku's face and they melt on his scarf like snow.

"I can regulate my body temperature," says the boy. "I'll be fine."

Izuku frowns. "But still—"

"I said I'd be fine." The boy's voice is sharp again, cutting through Izuku like Silica 5's terrain and bleeding distress into his bones. He takes a step backwards as if struck before catching himself.

This boy, whoever he is, is far too powerful in his radiance.

He's also extraordinarily compelling. And Izuku? Well.

Izuku's never been very good at leaving well enough alone.

"Why are you out here?"

The boy sighs, slow and sad. Frost curls away from his lips and quickly sublimates in the blazing light of the twin suns. "Hiding."

"From what?"

"Everything."

Izuku bites his lip beneath his scarf and fidgets. A rainbow skates over his goggles and rests on his left shoulder as his position changes, and Izuku thinks he sees the boy's eyes following it from beneath his own shaded lenses. "Are you comfortable out here?"

The boy pauses for a long moment before shaking his head, scattering several rainbows of his own.

"Do you want to come with me?"

"What?"

It's a terrible idea, of course. He does not know this boy. For all Izuku knows, he could be some dangerous criminal. And hadn't he mentioned his father? What if he is the son of some big-name crimelord? Should Izuku really be inviting him straight into the belly of the _One For All_? What if this is all a game to gain access to the ship?

"If you're hiding, wouldn't you be more comfortable hiding indoors?"

Well. Izuku's also been too trusting.

The boy is frowning, but his fingers are twisting as if he longs to acquiesce. "He'd find me."

"Not on my ship he wouldn't."

"Are you…" The boy has taken another curious step forward, and beneath his bangs his eyebrows are lifting incredulously. "Are you offering to take me away?"

Izuku shrugs. _Is he?_

"I might be."

There's a moment, just a single, crystalline moment, where he thinks the boy will say yes. At the very least he seems to want to.

"No," says the boy, and he says it like it hurts him to do so, like he's reached down and scooped up a handful of glass with his bare hands. "I can't."

"Then at least come back with me for a while," says Izuku, and he can't explain the disappointment he feels. "Not for forever. Just for the rest of the afternoon."

The boy sighs, frost flickering like vapor around his lips.

"Okay."

Izuku smiles.

* * *

 **Thanks for reading! Drop me a comment or visit my tumblr (coffeedoodle).**


	3. Silica 5 (Part 2)

**Silica 5**

 _(Part Two)_

* * *

Silica 5 has exactly one city.

It is quite a large city, massive enough to perhaps not really qualify as a city anymore. It's an entire civilization crammed into one urban center, and it's because no one wants to be alone on this planet.

Like its people, it bears many faces. The glamour of the aristocrats, the commonality of the working class, the grease-stain shadows of the bounty hunters and the criminal underbelly.

Izuku, unfortunately, is here to dance among the bounty hunters. But nothing is happening, today, and so he had wandered.

And now he's back in the city and he's not alone.

"Where are we going?" says the boy, goggles slid down to hang about his neck. His face is calm but his eyes flick nervously about, like he's looking for something, or someone.

"There's a cafe I know," says Izuku, says it like he actually knows the city. (He doesn't. He knows this street and this cafe because he'd walked it this morning with Toshinori by his side. He knows because this is where they'd eaten breakfast and where he'd poured over a book, where Toshinori had warned him in a low voice, _careful, careful_.)

"Ok," says the boy, and doesn't say anything else.

The cafe is quiet; it's that awkward time of day when it's too late for lunch and too soon for dinner. Shadows stretch along the pavement, painted green against the glare, and as they pass through the door Izuku can feel the boy's eyes on him.

They order without speaking and sit down by the window.

"Who are you looking for?" asks Izuku before he can lose his nerve. The boy startles, and turns eyes like ice on him. For a moment, Izuku thinks he's ruined this (whatever _this_ is), but then the boy looks away.

"No one," he says, and they both know he's lying.

Izuku lets it go. It's not worth it. If the boy wants to tell him, he will.

Instead he tries a different tactic. "What's your name?" he asks, and something flickers in the boy's eyes. Could this too be an answer he will not receive?

"Shouto," says the boy quietly.

"I'm Izuku," Izuku smiles. "Izuku Midoriya. I'm from Musutafu."

Shouto turns to inspect him properly. A small frown quirks at his lips. "Musutafu? Then were you at UA?"

It's a reasonable question. Musutafu is a small planet; it boasts blue skies and green hills but not much else. It's second moon, however, is a different question: the larger of the pair, Luna 2 is home to the prestigious UA Star Academy. Where Toshinori had gone. Where Kacchan had gone. Where Izuku had dreamed to go, but had never made it to.

No one really ever leaves Musutafu, except for those who go to UA first.

"No," he says truthfully, and he does not mention how much it stings, or how despite that he has it so much better than he'd dreamed. He does not mention Toshinori. He does not mention the _One For All_.

"Then what are you doing all the way out here?" asks Shouto, and the frown has deepened. Here in the cafe he looks less like a god and more like a boy; a mortal with sad eyes and wary words, but a mortal nonetheless. Steam drifts between them and Izuku takes a sip of his tea to buy himself time before answering.

"I already answered that," says Izuku, because he had. Sort of. "Business."

Shouto sighs—a soft little thing with a puff of frost on it—and rotates his cup in his hands.

The moment stretches between them, but the silence is peaceful. The tea is delicious—probably brewed on Silica 5's solitary moon if the glittery quality is anything to go by—and from the corner of his eye Izuku can see Shouto's shoulders relax, if just a little.

Someone passes in the street. Shouto tenses, then calms. His hands dance on the handle of the mug. "I thought you said we were going to your ship," he says. That's fair. Izuku had said that, after all, or at least implied it.

"Mm. Yes. I did sort of...say that. Uh." Izuku scratches at his ear, soft curls bouncing away from his fingers. "I just thought this would be nicer."

(And safer, but he doesn't say that. It's better if Shouto doesn't know how much he has to hide.)

Shouto sighs again. His eyes are sadder than ever, even as his hands still on the tabletop. "I should go," he says, and then he's standing, leaving the mug and the table and Izuku.

"Wait," says Izuku, though he knows it's a lost cause. He's standing too, before he even notices it, and from his peripheral he notices the barista watching them with silver eyebrows raised. "You don't have to go. Whatever you're hiding from—"

"Thank you, Izuku," says Shouto, and then he smiles and it's like the sun appearing from behind a cloud or the crashing of waves against a shore. "This has been really nice. But I can't hide forever."

"Be safe?" says Izuku, because there's nothing else to say.

Shouto nods, still smiling. One hand reaches out to rest against his, just for a moment, and then the touch ends and Shouto is at the door.

"I hope we meet again, Izuku," says Shouto, and then he's gone.

Izuku sits back down heavily in his chair and takes a sip of his now-lukewarm tea. He doesn't know what it is, exactly, but Shouto has a gravity and now that he's gone it feels like a part of him has fallen away, a part he never knew existed in the first place. He doesn't know what to do with this feeling exactly, doesn't know what it means, but he does know one thing:

This is not the last he will see of Shouto and his sad, sad eyes.


	4. star signs

**2.**

 **star signs**

* * *

 _I think Izuku's probably around 10-12 here. He's young. Just know that this is early on in their relationship, and actually takes place BEFORE Silica 5._

* * *

At first, it's hard to reconcile them with each other; All Might, the great captain, proud and smiling, and Toshinori, kind but frail, still great but weakened. It's frightening, in the beginning, to see the grim lines of his face and the bones that poke through his skin, to watch from around the corner as he coughs up blood into an old, chipped mug. He tries to do it when Izuku's not looking, so as not to frighten him, but Izuku sees and Izuku knows and he's frightened nonetheless.

"Toshinori?" he asks one night, when the sky outside is an endless expanse and the stars stretch on and on forever.

"Yes, my boy?"

There's something about the way he says that, the way he always says it, that makes Izuku feel warm. Those words are like a promise, he thinks: that not only is he an apprentice, a successor, but he is something important that Toshinori would be willing to protect. It's a promise in Toshinori's faintly gleaming eyes or his shaking hands as they run through Izuku's curls, a promise that says, _I will not discard you_.

It feels good. It feels safe.

"Does it hurt?"

He's wanted to aks this for a while, but he's afraid. Afraid to ask, afraid to hear the answer, afraid that his words will only hurt Toshinori more.

"Does what hurt?" asks Toshinori, but his eyes drift to the blood-splattered mug sitting on the dashboard.

"You know," says Izuku, still not sure what words to use even as he speaks. He gestures vaguely at Toshinori's fragile frame, and points very briefly at the place beneath his shirt where that starbust scar is. Then he nods his head towards the mug and hopes Toshinori understands.

There's a sigh, long and slow like a mountain settling, and Toshinori looks down at his long, calloused fingers. "It is nothing that I can't handle."

"But does it—"

"I'm alright, my boy," says Toshinori, and his smile is gentle as he reaches out to pat Izuku's shoulder. It's a comfort, almost, except that his hands shake; but Izuku leans into the touch regardless and tries not to watch the stuttering rise and fall of his mentor's chest.

"Are you sure?"

Toshinori turns away, back towards the stars and the black velvet surrounding them. "Izuku," he says, pointing. "Do you see that star?"

"Which one?"

"That little one, there." The star he is referring to is small and distant, a fuzzy patch of white brightness among the inky vastitudes. "Do you know what that one is?"

"A white dwarf?"

Toshinori nods, smiling a small, small smile. "Yes. It was once a much larger star, but it reached the end of its life and it went supernova. But it did not die, Izuku. It lost mass and became colder, but it is still there. And it will continue to be there for a very, very long time."

Izuku frowns, struggling to recall the diagrams contained within his textbooks. "For forever?"

"Not forever, no." Toshinori's expression is quiet and stone-like as he continues to peer out the window. "Eventually, it will burn itself out and become a black dwarf. It will not emit heat or light, and at that point it will be dead. But it's purely theoretical, my boy; the universe is not yet old enough to hold a black dwarf."

Izuku nods. "So why are you telling me this?"

"That star right there," says Toshinori softly, "is me. I went supernova, but I did not die. I'm here. I will be here for a very long time. It does not matter if I am not as bright or as warm as the young stars around me, and it does not matter if I feel pain or sadness. I am here and I will always be here. Do you understand?"

Tears prick at Izuku's eyes but he bites them back. "Yes," he says, quiet and thoughtful, and does not look at the mug on the dashboard.

(He tries to ignore the knowledge of the black dwarf that waits in the path of the future. He tries to ignore that it waits for them all, but is uncomfortably near to Toshinori.)

"What am I, then?" he asks.

"You are a star just born of a nebula," says Toshinori. "Your journey has only just begun."


End file.
